The Snow Queen
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The Snow Queen (Danish: Sneedronningen) is a fairy tale written by Hans Christian Andersen and first published in 1845. The story centers on the struggle between good and evil as taken on by a little boy and girl, Gerda and Kay.
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[edit] Characters of the tale
- The Snow Queen, queen of the snowflakes or "snow bees", who travels throughout the world with the snow. Her palace and gardens are in the lands of permafrost, specifically Spitsbergen. She is successful in abducting Kay after he has fallen victim to the splinters of the troll-mirror. She promises to free Kay if he can spell "eternity" with the pieces of ice in her palace.
- The troll or devil, who makes an evil mirror that distorts reality and later shatters to infect people on earth with its splinters that distort sight and freeze hearts. Some English translations of The Snow Queen denote this character as a hobgoblin.
- Kay, a little boy who lives in a large city in the garret of a building across the street from Gerda, his playmate, whom he loves like a sister. He falls victim to the splinters of the troll-mirror and the Snow Queen.
- Gerda, the heroine of this tale, who succeeds in finding and saving Kay from the Snow Queen.
- Grandmother of Kay, who tells him and Gerda about the Snow Queen. Some of Grandmother's actions are essential points of the story.
- An old woman sorceress, who maintains a cottage on the river, with a garden that is permanently in summer. She seeks to keep Gerda with her, but Gerda's thought of roses awakens her from the old woman's enchantment.
- A field Crow or Raven, who thinks that Kay is the new prince of his land.
- A tame Crow or Raven, who is the mate of the field Crow/Raven and has the run of the princess's palace. She lets Gerda into the royal bedchamber in her search for Kay.
- A princess, who desires a prince-consort as intelligent as she, who finds himself at home in her palace. She helps Gerda in her search for Kay by giving her warm, rich clothing, servants, and a golden coach.
- Her prince, formerly a poor young man, who comes to the palace and passes the test set by the princess to become prince.
- A robber hag, the only woman among the robbers who capture Gerda as she travels through their region in a golden coach.
- The robber girl, daughter of the robber hag. Her captive doves and reindeer, Bae, tell Gerda that Kay is with the Snow Queen. She helps Gerda on her way to Kay.
- Bae, the reindeer, who carries Gerda to the Snow Queen's palace.
- The Lapp woman, who provides shelter to Gerda and Bae, and writes a message on a cod fish to the Finn woman further on the way to the Snow Queen's gardens.
- The Finn woman, who lives just 2 miles away from the Snow Queen's gardens and palace. She knows the secret of Gerda's power to save Kay.
[edit] Seven stories, divisions of the tale
- About the Mirror and its Pieces
- A Little Boy and a Little Girl
- The Flower Garden of the Woman Who Knew Magic
- The Prince and Princess
- The Little Robber Girl
- The Lapp Woman and the Finn Woman
- What Happened at the Snow Queen's Palace and What Happened Afterward
[edit] Plotline
The Snow Queen is a tale told in seven "stories" (Danish: Historier). To set the stage for the main plot we are told in the first story of an evil "troll", "Actually the devil himself", Andersen states, who makes a magic mirror that has the power to distort the appearance of things reflected in it. All the good and beautiful aspects of people and things are shrunk down to nothing in the mirror's reflection while all the bad and ugly aspects are magnified so that they look even worse than they really are. The devil taught a "devil school," and the devil and his pupils delighted in taking the mirror throughout the world to distort everyone and everything. They liked how the mirror made the loveliest landscapes look like "boiled spinach." They then wanted to carry the mirror into heaven with the idea of making fools of the angels and God, but the higher they lifted it, the more the mirror grinned and shook with delight. When they had taken it very high up it shook so much that it slipped from their grasp and fell back to earth where it shattered into billions of pieces—some no larger than a grain of sand. These splinters were blown around with the wind and would get into people's hearts and eyes. Their hearts would become frozen like a block of ice, and their eyes would become like the troll-mirror itself, only showing them the bad and ugly in things and people.
The second story begins the main plotline: A little boy, Kay, and a little girl, Gerda, live next door to each other in the garrets of buildings with adjoining roofs in a large city. One could get from Kay's to Gerda's home just by stepping over the gutters of each building. The two families grow vegetables and roses in window boxes placed on the gutters. Kay and Gerda have a window-box garden to play in, and they become devoted in love to each other as playmates.
Kay's grandmother tells the children about the Snow Queen, who is ruler over the snowflakes, that look like bees—that is why they are called "snow bees." As bees have a queen, so do the snow bees, and she is seen where the snowflakes cluster the most. Looking out of his frosted window, Kay, one winter, sees the Snow Queen, who beckons him to come with her. Kay draws back in fear from the window. The grandmother also presents a religious hymn wich is essential for understanding of the story, in fact an old Christmas Carol. In The Snow Queen two lines are refrained: Where the roses grow in the vale, there the infant Jesus will speak to us. Because roses adorned the window box garden of Gerda and Kay, Gerda would always be reminded of her love for Kay by the sight of roses.
It was on a pleasant summer's day following the winter that splinters of the troll-mirror get into Kay's heart and eyes while he and Gerda are looking at a picture book in their window-box garden. Kay's personality changes: he becomes cruel and aggressive. He destroys their window-box garden, he makes fun of his grandmother, and he no longer cares about Gerda, since all of them now appear bad and ugly to him. The only beautiful and perfect things to him now are the tiny snowflakes that he sees through a magnifying glass. Kay also changes interests and gets a good head for math and physics.
The following winter he goes out with his sled to the market square and hitches it—as was the custom of those playing in the snowy square—to a curious white sleigh carriage, driven by the Snow Queen herself appearing as a woman in a white fur-coat. Outside the city she shows herself to Kay and takes him into her sleigh. She kisses him only twice: once to numb him from the cold, and the second time to cause him to forget about Gerda and his family. She does not kiss him a third time as that would kill him. Kay is then taken to the Snow Queen's palace on Spitsbergen, near the North Pole where he is contented to live due to the splinters of the troll-mirror in his heart and eyes.
The people of the city get the idea that Kay has been drowned in the river nearby, but Gerda, who is heartbroken at Kay's disappearance, goes out to look for him. She questions everyone and everything about Kay's whereabouts. By not taking the gift of Gerda's new red shoes at first, the river seems to let her know that Kay is not drowned: Gerda offered them to the river in exchange for Kay, but why would it take them if it did not drown him? At the home of the old sorceress a rosebush raised from below the ground by Gerda's warm tears tells her that Kay is not among the dead, all of whom it could see while it was under the earth. (The sorceress, who wanted to keep Gerda with her by forgetting her quest for Kay caused all the roses in her garden to sink under the earth because she knew that if Gerda were to see a rose, she would be reminded of Kay.) Gerda flees from the old woman's beautiful garden of eternal summer and meets a crow, who tells her that Kay was in the princess's palace. She subsequently goes to the palace and meets the princess and her prince, who was very similar to Kay. Gerda tells them her story and they help by providing warm clothes and a beautiful coach. While travelling in the coach Gerda is captured by robbers and brought to their castle, where she is befriended by a little robber girl, whose pet doves tell her that they had seen Kay when he was carried away by the Snow Queen in the direction of Lapland. The captive reindeer, Bae, tells her that he knows how to get to Lapland since it is his home. The robber girl, then, frees Gerda and the reindeer to travel north to the Snow Queen's palace. They make two stops: first at the Lapp woman's home and then at the Finn woman's home. The Finn woman tells the reindeer that the secret of Gerda's unique power to save Kay is in her sweet and innocent child's heart:
- "I can't give her any greater power than she already has. Don't you see how great it is? Don't you see how people and animals want to serve her, how she has come so far in the world in her bare feet? She must not learn of her power from us. It resides in her heart, it lies in the fact that she is a sweet and innocent child. If she can't reach the Snow Queen on her own and remove the glass from little Kay, there's nothing we can do to help her."[1]
When Gerda gets to the Snow Queen's palace, she is first halted by the snowflakes which guard it. The only thing that overcomes them is Gerda's praying the Lord's Prayer, which causes her breath to take the shape of angels, who resist the snowflakes and allow Gerda to enter the palace. Gerda finds Kay alone on the frozen lake, which the Snow Queen calls the "Mirror of Reason" on which her throne sits. Gerda finds Kay engaged in the task that the Snow Queen gave him to use pieces of ice as components of a Chinese puzzle to form characters and words. If he would be able to form the word "eternity" (Danish: Evigheden) the Snow Queen would release him from her power and give him a pair of skates. Gerda finds him, runs up to him, and weeps warm tears on him, which melt his heart, burning away the troll-mirror splinter in it. Kay bursts into tears, dislodging the splinter from his eye. Gerda kisses Kay a few times, and he becomes cheerful and healthy again, with sparkling eyes and rosy cheeks: he is saved by the power of Gerda's love. He and Gerda dance around on the lake of ice so joyously that the splinters of ice Kay has been playing with are caught up into it. When the splinters tire of the dance they fall down to spell the very word Kay was trying to spell, "eternity." Even if the Snow Queen were to return, she would be obliged to free Kay. Kay and Gerda then leave the Snow Queen's domain with the help of the reindeer, the Finn woman, and the Lapp woman. They meet the robber girl after they have crossed the line of vegetation, and from there they walk back to their home, "the big city." They find that all is the same at home, but they have changed! They are now grown up, and they are delighted to see that it is summertime. They exemplify the Bible passage that the Grandmother reads at the end, "Assuredly, I say to you, unless you are converted and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 18:3). The Christmas hymn is then reprised as the conclusion.
[edit] Symbols
The usual interpretation of this story is a balance between reason and intellectual thinking on one side, and feelings and romanticism on the other. The Snow Queen herself is often interpreted as a symbol of cold intellectualism, and this is stressed in the behaviour of Kay when he is taken. He understands that something is wrong and tries to protect himself by using the Lord's Prayer, but quickly ends up reciting mathematic formulas instead. Gerda on the other hand, keeps her faith and wins through. The troll mirror is connected to intellectual criticism, a topic Andersen used in different ways in many other stories. The bottom line is that an intellectual and a critic may get so possessed with flaws in art and nature that he fails to appreciate what is good. Here, the romantic view of truth and beauty shines through, as in many of Andersen's more philosophical works.
The Danish Christmas carol that is connected to the story was written by the Danish psalmist Hans Adolph Brorson, the most well-known Pietist clergyman in Denmark. The links to Pietist Christianity are easy to spot in this story. In the psalm, Jesus is symbolized by the rose, a very common trait in Pietism. The rose is the most prominent flower in the Snow Queen.
This is in contrast to the troll, whom Andersen identifies at the beginning of the tale as the devil, the effect of whose shattered mirror is to turn people's hearts to ice. The Snow Queen herself personifies the coldness of intellectualism and criticism: she calls the frozen lake on which her throne sits, the "mirror of reason."
[edit] Media adaptations
- The Snow Queen was made into an animated film in the Soviet Union, entitled Snezhnaya koroleva (1957). It was dubbed into English and released in 1959 by Universal Studios with the voices of Sandra Dee and Tommy Kirk as Gerda and Kay; this version was introduced by an Art Linkletter Christmas quarter hour special. A 1998 English version was also released.
- It was made into a live action film in the Soviet Union in 1966, directed by Gennadi Kazansky.
- It was adapted by the live-action family series Faerie Tale Theatre in 1985, starring Melissa Gilbert as Gerda and Lee Remick as the Snow Queen.
- It was again made into a live action film in Finland in 1986, entitled Lumikuningatar, directed by Päivi Hartzell.
- It was also made into a movie in the Soviet Union in 1986, entitled Tayna snezhnoy korolevy (The Secret of the Snow Queen) and directed by Nikolai Aleksandrovich.
- It was made into an animated film again in 1995, directed by Martin Gates.
- In 2000 it was made again into a live action film in Denmark with its Danish title, directed by Jacob Jørgensen and Kristof Kuncewicz.
- It was made into a live-action film again in 2002 by Hallmark, starring Bridget Fonda, Jeremy Guilbaut, Chelsea Hobbs, Robert Wisden, and Wanda Cannon; and directed by David Wu
- The HBO series, Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales for Every Child, did a version of the story, featuring Eartha Kitt as the voice of the Snow Queen.
- It is presently an Anime series, produced by NHK and animated by TMS Entertainment (2005).
- It was developed as a play at Magnus Theatre, featuring Ice Ghosts on rollerskates, and acrobatic ravens.
- It was adapted by the BBC into a live action 1 hour film that was shown at Christmas Morning in 2005.
- Adapted into a musical by Victory Gardens Theater in 2006.
[edit] Variations of the plotline in the film and Anime series
- In the 1959 film the Snow Queen has a mirror that she looks into to eavesdrop on mortals, and she sends out splinters of ice to infect the ones who have offended her. She is portrayed as the source of evil since the troll is not portrayed. She is offended at Kay's boast that he will put her on a hot stove. The text of the tale makes the troll and its mirror the source of evil, and the Snow Queen is the force of cold and winter.
- In the Anime feature the troll-mirror is the Snow Queen's invention, which she intends to reassemble, and she goes throughout the world to gather its fragments. When she has abducted Kay, she compels him to help her in her task. Kay is also shown throwing something at the cat after he is infected with the shards of the troll-mirror.
[edit] The Snow Queen in literature and culture
- The Snow Queen likely influenced the creation of C. S. Lewis's character Jadis, otherwise known as the White Witch of Narnia.
- Kay and the Snow Queen appear in Bill Willingham's comic book series Fables, from DC Comics Vertigo Imprint. There Kay is a grown man who still has the mirror fragment in his eye and sees the sins of all around him. He constantly gouges out his eyes, but they regrow each time. The Snow Queen is one of the most powerful servants of the Adversary, and an enemy of Fabletown. The Snow Queen's name in Fables is Lumi, which is Finnish for snow.
- It inspired Joan D. Vinge's science-fantasy novel The Snow Queen, which added interstellar travel, sea-dwelling sentient mammals, and a galaxy-wide conspiracy to the basic love story.
- The Mirror of Reason, The Snow Queen's palace, is the name of a popular American based guild in the MMORPG, Guild Wars. The Guild, which is officially recognised as a notable guild, bases its lore on the Snow Queen tale and actively promotes the story. It is a classic example of how the Snow Queen tale has influenced popular online culture.
- Mercedes Lackey's tale The Wizard of London, is based upon the plot of The Snow Queen, albeit set in contemporary London with the trappings of Elemental Magic.
- The anime version of Sailor Moon's Sailor Stars arc starts with Queen Nehellenia, brought back from her defeat in the previous arc, infecting people with mirror shards, including Sailor Moon's love Mamoru Chiba.
- Adapted and modified into a modern korean drama in 2006 staring Hyun Bin and Sung Yu Ri, also titled Snow Queen.
[edit] Notes
- ^ Tiina Nunnally and Jackie Wullschlager, Hans Christian Andersen Fairy Tales, (New York: Viking Penguine, 2004), 199
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- SurLaLune's Annotated The Snow Queen
- The Snow Queen at the Hans Christian Andersen website
- Hans Christian Andersen, The Snow Queen: e-text
- The Snow Queen material and texts
- Jean Hersholt's translation of The Snow Queen
- Another text link
- IMDb on The Snow Queen in media
- Free audio story of The Snow Queen at Storynory
- Free audiobook from LibriVox
- Guild Wars on Mirror of Reason
